How I Met Dr Horrible
by dr-canis-horriblus
Summary: Robin had always been a government secret agent, working in the SHIELD Initiative, but when she realized that this job was too difficult, she had no choice but to temporarily step out. Now, several years later, Robin is assigned to the case of the infamous Dr. Horrible (Barney, naturally) and called back in to flag him down and finish the job. Avengers/HIMYM/Dr. Horrible crossover.
1. The Exposition

(**Epilogue)**

There was a little known secret to Robin Scherbatsky, the MacLaren's gang's favorite Canadian, gun-toting, cigar-smoking, occasionally temptress-like ex- pop star. This secret was something that Robin had hidden from her friends for years, fearing that if she unveiled it, they would think that she was absolutely, out of her mind insane and would feel distrustful of her afterwards, since she had kept a secret this big from them all along- so it went many years, not a word was spoken about this crack in Scherbatsky history. And Robin liked it that way.

The secret in question was that, about two years after Robin had moved from Canada to New York, she had signed up for what she believed to be a telemarketing job or, from what the ad appeared in the newspaper, a job that was simply just office work and nothing really beyond that.

Weeks passed, and one day, Robin received a letter in her mailbox which stated that she would have to come in for a quick interview before it could be evaluated whether she'd received the job or not. The stamp on the outside of the envelope was odd, and Robin thought to herself that it looked a bit out of the ordinary for a company's logo that was supposed to represent selling objects by phones. If anything, the logo stamp more closely resembled that of some kind of top secret business that no one was supposed to know about.

For now though, Robin just shrugged this off. She was excited to be starting a new job, no matter what it was.

The interview for the job was far from an ordinary interview, and Robin quickly caught on to the fact that this job was not, in any way, an ordinary job. She found herself in a skintight body suit, packing a gun, but that wasn't even the weirdest part. During the span of the interview, which lasted about an hour, Robin had to endure explosions- real explosions, not just some cheap greenscreen stuff- fires, and the shooting of bullets. To top all that off, the woman conducting the 'interview' made Robin run a test evaluation over how well she'd be able to defend herself against a 'giant, manlike green creature.'

By the end of the day, Robin was more than happy to return home. Another week passed. One day, she opened her mailbox to find yet another, larger envelope. She opened the envelope precisely, and inside it was a certificate that said Robin was approved to be in the SHIELD Initiative.

_SHIELD Initiative? _Up until now, Robin hadn't even realized that's what it was called.

As she pulled out the envelope to read it closer, a card fell from it, about the size of any other regular ID card. The card was completed with a photo of Robin's face. It read "SHIELD Alias Name: Maria Hill," and provided several other facts about Robin, such as her weight, eye color, hair color, and date of birth.

In bolder, white print at the bottom of the card, the only words were this:

**Welcome to the Initiative.**

Many years went by, and this top secret, government organized job proved to be a bit much for Robin. Eventually, she resigned, saying that she wished to pursue an easier job- perhaps a news anchor or something like that. And that was the last SHIELD ever saw of Robin, of Maria Hill.

At least for a few more years…

…..

Elsewhere, a young, blond man by the name of Billy Stinson, shy, socially awkward, and built with a smallish frame, was desperately trying to prove that he wasn't the pansy he felt he'd been set up to be. His alias name was Dr. Horrible, and he was something of a mad scientist. For a while now, he'd been planning to join the Evil League of Evil, a supervillain club of sorts run by a diabolical (Though nonspeaking) horse called Bad Horse, for obvious reasons.

At the same time, Billy was relentlessly pursuing a kindhearted redhead named Penny, whom he'd met up with at the laundromat on Wednesdays and Saturdays for frozen yogurt.

He hoped daily that Penny would see him for who he was- just a guy who was hopelessly, irretrievably in love with her- but she never seemed to.

Through a series of events, grief struck. Billy had never meant for things to end the way they did, but the league demanded this from him, and they'd surely gotten their wish.

Due to a death ray misfire, per request from Bad Horse that he build a death ray, Penny had ended up _dead. _And that was it. There was no turning back now. There was an empty hole in Billy's heart that would never be filled again; he personally regarded himself now as a monster. But he kept himself going, and was accepted into the league just like that.

He operated with the league for about two years, but eventually snapped. Evildoing couldn't be his thing anymore. One day, he quit, headed home, packed his bags, and got on the nearest plane to New York City, as far away from the purgatory that had become California as he could get.

From there, he legally changed his first name to Barney (As everyone who'd reported his crime had known him only as Dr. Horrible, and had not once found out his last name, making it easy for him to do this without fear of disclosure), became a hippie, and got a job at a coffee shop, later finding love once again with a blond named Shannon.

The story took a turn for the even darker from there- Shannon suddenly broke up with Barney, out of the blue, for some rich jerk in a suit that reminded Barney all too much of his mortal enemy, Captain Hammer.

That was the icing on the cake holding Barney back from his, well, horribleness. He was going to give up on being such a goody-two-shoes, and he saw no reason why he shouldn't. So far, this kind of personality had gotten him nowhere in life. Now, he had a plan.

The night of the break up (And with some assistance by an ad passed to him on the street that read "Suit up and save"), Barney made some drastic changes- he shaved his goatee, trimmed his hair, and agreed to only wear suits from this point on. It was, in a sense, somewhat like returning to the league all over again.

And in the months that followed, Barney had taken on an entirely different persona. He trained himself to be smooth. Calculating, manipulative, a skilled liar, shameless of what he had to do to get what he had to get.

Women were his targets. No more romantic nice guy. He set his eyes on one conquest after another, feeling no guilt as he conned them to his advantages, then ditched the next day.

Now, he truly was becoming something of a villain. And he wouldn't even try to stop it this time. There was a certain, satisfying rush of power he got every time he'd manipulated some dumb chick into coming home with him for the night, and this rush intensified day by day.

He became known, around town and to himself, as 'The Player King of New York City,' and he saw no shame in that.

_Why be __**good **__when you can be __**awesome?**_he thought, mentally winking.

Over time, Barney had acquired a few friends, one of which was Ted, a usually quiet, intelligent, dark haired man who he met at a urinal in the bathroom of a bar he often visited.

Fairly enough, he tried using Ted to the best of his advantages, but Ted was cunning enough himself to not fall under this spell.

The two quickly became best friends, and shortly afterwards, Barney discovered that Ted had two friends who were also ironically a couple- a tall, gentle man named Marshall, and a shorter redhead named Lily, who proved to be precocious enough not to fall for Barney's schemes either and to keep him in check. And though at times their relationship sickened Barney, he had to admit that they were pretty good friends to him, something he never really had in his life.

As fate would have it, in the year 2005, both Barney and a certain ex-pursuer of his would coincidentally cross paths, setting into motion a rocky chain of events unlike no other.


	2. Enter Maria Hill

(The year 2011)

Ted, Marshall, Lily, and Robin were all in their booth at MacLaren's, making small talk as usual, when the subject of Barney came up.

"Hey, where's Barney?" Ted asked, noting that he wasn't in his usual spot at the table.

Marshall shrugged. "Don't know, but I'm almost kinda startin' to worry about the guy, I mean, we haven't seen him for a few days now."

"I hope he's okay," Lily said worriedly. Robin scoffed. "Psh, Barney's fine. Trust me, the guy is a born survivor, a lone wolf. If he goes missing, I'm sure it's all for the best. He's a liar. He can get his way out of literally anything."

"Yeah, but the fact he hasn't shown himself for four days now is honestly kinda weird," Ted stated, placing his beer bottle down on the table with a _clink._ "It's not like Barney to just flat out ditch like that, you'd think he'd at least tell us first where he was going and why."

"Ted," Robin addressed. "I once dated that guy. For three months. Periodically disappearing is his thing; one time, at that point, I woke up next to no one in bed only to find out the next day that he had gone out to buy me a bouquet of flowers in the middle of the night." She picked up her beer bottle, gesturing with it as she spoke. "Point is, he's okay. Who knows- maybe he's acting out one of those crazy plays from the Playbook that involves randomly going missing. You never know."

But that wasn't what Barney was doing. Not this time at least. A few days earlier, Barney had received a call from the league, who apparently wanted to reconnect with him, and through much negotiation, he had agreed to start on his first heist in awhile- a simple bank robbery, nothing too complicated.

He suited up with his red labcoat, strapped on the goggles, pulled on the gloves, and hoped for the best that he wouldn't get caught. _My first heist in a long time…it oughtta be interesting, _he thought with a half smile forming on his face. _Who knows..maybe I'll even get some hot chicks outta this. Ladies love a smooth criminal, right? _He winked. _It's showtime._

. …

Days passed with no word from Barney, and his friends grew increasingly worried. But it was Robin who received the call she'd least expected to receive.

It had been a few hours past midnight when the phone on Robin's nightstand buzzed. Since she'd been deeply asleep and dreaming though, it took longer than it should have to wake her up.

She moaned and turned over at first, but the buzzing continued. She pawed at the phone, hoping to get lucky enough to hit the off button, but instead slid the phone off the table and onto the carpet. The buzzing still didn't stop.

Robin muttered some obscenities under her breath before bending down and picking up the phone.

"Hello?"

The voice on the other line was harsh and demanding, yet familiar, though all in all a bit much for this time of the night, but Robin listened anyway.

"Slow down, you want me to do what?"

The man repeated himself and explained thoroughly.

"Okay, I'll be there." Robin hung up. There wasn't time to think- SHIELD needed her back, right then and there. She quickly got dressed, pulling her Maria Hill suit out of the closet, and quietly headed out, hoping more than anything that Ted wouldn't hear her (fortunately, he didn't.)

…

The center was abuzz with activity when Robin arrived, and on every computer screen was a peculiar red blinking dot.

That dot, as she later found out, represented where a criminal currently was that SHIELD had been tracking for a long time. This time, the dot showed that aforementioned criminal was hiding out at one of the banks not far away. After a brief meeting with her ex-boss, Nick Fury, the man in charge of it all, which concerned possibly who the criminal was and how he needed to be taken down, Robin and another agent, who would assist her if needed, headed off into the night and boarded the chopper, guns, ammo, and taser on hand in case the criminal was violent.

Further inspection of the red blinking dot that appeared on all of the screens would reveal that this criminal was, in some way, part of the Evil League of Evil, and had likely been caught at least once before in the past (Those who were part of the league and had ever been arrested or noted by SHIELD would be tagged with a nontoxic, odorless, clear spray that could easily be tracked if they ever were to be seen in public).

The light on the GPS in the front of the chopper continued to blink faster and faster as the chopper neared the building that the criminal was in.

Into her headset, Robin reported, "It appears we've got the criminal in place. Copy that, we're going in for the kill."

The chopper lowered until it reached the roof of a tall building, where it landed. Robin hopped out and took the stairs to the first floor from the rooftop, then sprinted across the street to the building where the criminal was located.

Her gun was loaded and cocked, ready to fire if anything crazy happened, as she bravely sauntered through the doors and right to the scene of the crime.

There wasn't anyone else in the bank due to how late it was, so looting that much cash would have been easy for most thieves, especially thieves who had been smart enough to remember to bring an assistant of some sort.

But this thief in particular hadn't. To him, this was a one man job.

Robin entered the room and looked around. No sign of movement so far. Then, she saw something move out of the corner of her eye and instinctively whipped out the gun. _Click, BANG! _The criminal had just barely dodged the bullet, and had screamed in a somewhat girlish way as he did. That was when he became visible..

There, in the center of the floor, picking himself up from where he had landed, which had been on his back, was Robin's age-old enemy, just who she'd suspected all along- Dr. Horrible. For years she'd wanted to hunt down this fool, but had never been lucky enough to catch him or to even try to, so this was exciting.

The money he'd been attempting to steal was everywhere, but before he started to pick it up, he saw Robin, right there, and for a minute, their eyes met. Locked onto each other's. Her gaze was cold, unrelenting, and severe, and she could see that his was cocky, smug, though slightly fearful- but it was hard seeing past the goggles too.

He stopped, dead in his tracks, his chest heaving in and out breathlessly from the fear Robin's sudden arrival had inflicted on him. He dropped his death ray to the floor and lifted up his goggles to get a closer look at the woman who was likely about to kill him.

"Whoa, hottie alert!" He couldn't control himself. She looked familiar- like Robin Scherbatsky, that woman he was best friends with and also undeniably in love with- and he couldn't resist that. Besides, she was wearing a skintight, navy blue body suit. _Stinson eye candy, _he thought to himself.

To Robin's surprise, he approached her, looking her up and down, sizing her up the way a wolf sizes up a juicy cow.

"What are you doing?"

He didn't answer that. "Nice body suit," he said with a wink. He smiled. "You're Agent Maria Hill, aren't you?" He was speaking in that seductive, low voice he often used to coax chicks into coming home with him or whatnot. "Y'know, I've heard about you, but I never though you looked like this, I mean, those pictures in the newspaper, about Special Worker of the Month or whatever, didn't do you justice!"

He then giggled. "Hehe, justice. That's actually really funny, 'cuz you're, like, a cop, and I'm-"

"Put your arms out."

"Why?"

"Just do it."

Dr. Horrible, aka Barney, obeyed and placed his arms out in front of him, and Robin pulled out a pair of handcuffs.

"Ooh, handcuffs!" He said. He smiled and winked again. "Nice. Always good to keep a pair with you."

Robin ignored him and placed the cuffs on his wrists.

He then realized that Robin was actually going to arrest him. "No way! Hill, you saucy little minx, you fooled me! You're really gonna go through with this and arrest me!"

"Yeah, and you're surprised?" She had a surprising edge in her voice as she said the words, glaring at him.

"Well…eh, ish." He shrugged.

Robin grabbed the collar of his labcoat and yanked him up by it. "Come on."

"Uh, no," Barney resisted stubbornly- and with great sass. "Sorry, but if you want me to just give in and go with you to prison, then you're gonna need to do a lot more than handcuff me. Good try, Hill. Good try." His overall smugness only annoyed Robin more.

To Barney though, this was all just some sort of game. As Dr. Horrible, he'd been arrested once before. As Barney, he'd actually been arrested several times before, the majority of those times for urinating in public, which was apparently a crime to his surprise. But in all cases, he'd found his way out somehow. He was Barney Stinson, after all- no matter what happened to him, chances are he had a plan on how to get himself out of it. This time would be no different.

His response to being handcuffed was to get up and make for the door. "See ya!" he called to Robin before fleeing. This was a bad move- Robin reacted quickly and pulled out her taser, and Barney barely had time to do anything before he was zapped squarely in the back with the stinging bolts of electricity.

Satisfyingly for Robin, he dropped to the floor immediately and his body limpened, a peaceful expression on his face as if he'd just fallen asleep right there.

_Another failed heist! Way to go, Horrible- you'll never have another chance again, _were his last thoughts in the two seconds before he blacked out entirely and faded into unconsciousness. How was he going to get out of this one?


	3. The Reveal

Barney's eyes opened slowly, adjusting to the dull fluorescent lighting of the room he was in. His last memory before being tazed, he recalled, was attempting to rob a bank and being caught by some woman who looked remarkably like Robin Scherbatsky. _That must be how I got here, _he thought to himself. His back was stinging, like a million little bolts of lightning were repeatedly striking him across his spine. Once he had fully come to, he looked around at his surroundings. Walls. Glass walls. He wasn't in a room, he was in some kind of prisoner containment cell.

He groaned in frustration as he stood up, banging on the wall with his fist. It wasn't even ordinary glass, it was some sort of thick, obviously shatterproof plexiglass. But hey, at least the handcuffs were off.

_I feel like a monkey in a zoo, _he thought to himself. _A really awesome monkey, though, but still a monkey. _Barney paced around in his cell, plotting and planning escape.

"Walking around in circles isn't gonna get you outta there." A certainly familiar- actually eerily familiar- voice came from somewhere in the area. He wheeled around to see Maria Hill again, smiling at her captive like a child would smile at a frog they'd just captured in a jar. She was proud, and Barney could tell. Proud of the fact that she'd finally enslaved the villain she'd been long struggling to catch.

Barney removed his goggles, then started to take off the labcoat as well.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm unsuiting up," he told her resolvedly. "Suiting down. I mean, I'm gonna be here for a while probably, whether I want to be or not, so I might as well get comfortable…for now. 'Til I escape." He said that last part with great certainty. However, that wasn't the thing that was on Robin's mind at the moment as she stood there, outside of the glass cell, haunted by a certain word that the 'doctor' had just said- _unsuited up._ Was it even slightly possible that- no, it wasn't. Robin wouldn't allow herself to think, even for one second, that it was. But yet, in the back of her mind, Robin knew that there were a lot of coincidences lately- how Dr. Horrible had obviously been hitting on her before. How his appearance clearly mimicked Barney's, right down to his physique, which was built small boned, yet somewhat muscular at the same time. Most importantly of all, how Barney had so mysteriously vanished just a few days ago.

All of these things linked together in Robin's mind, connecting like a giant puzzle. She watched him in his cell, astounded, as the lab coat slid off his body and dropped to the floor, revealing, underneath it, a suit.

This was too much for her to take, and she blurted out the words before she could stop herself. "You're Barney, aren't you?"

He too stopped, shocked entirely, and stared back at her. "Well..yeah..and you know me from where?" It was then that the realization hit him as well, feeling about as hard and painful as one of Marshall's slaps. What sort of twist of fate was this even? Certainly not any kind that Barney had even thought likely before, that he was positive of. A twist of fate by the devil himself.

"And you're Robin. Robin Scherbatsky."

She could see in his eyes the mixture of confusion and fear as he stared back at her through the glass. This was unbelievable- just days ago, Robin had been joking around with the man that was now looking through the glass wall of SHIELD'S prisoner containment cell. This didn't seem right; nothing should ever happen as drastically as this was happening. But what could they do about it? It was fact, and now the only thing left to add on was an explanation.

For a couple of minutes, neither of them said a word, both were searching their minds for anything to say at all.

"I guess..that kinda makes sense if you think about it," Barney said, coming closer towards the glass. "I mean, I thought you looked-"

"Yeah, I thought you looked too."

"Familiar?"

She nodded. "Yup. But it's just…it's weird. I mean, we've all seen so many of your doppelgangers before that, for a while, I just thought Dr Horrible was another one, y'know? I guess not. It's when you think you can trust a guy."

Barney looked awkwardly towards the floor. "Well, I mean, it's not like you can't trust me anymore…ya still can, I just..it's a whole other thing, Robin, but I don't want it to ruin, like, our friendship or..anything else." He was so unsure, so concerned about the situation. Robin hadn't seen Barney that worried about anything in awhile, but this really was something to worry about- neither of them knew how this was going to play out in the end.

"So what made you decide to commit to the life of crime, Horrible?" As Robin asked the question, she did so in a very businesslike way that sounded prompt and matter-of-fact, rather than wondering or inquisitive. It was as if she'd really wanted Barney's honest answer, no matter how crazy it may be. She crossed her arms. "Be honest."

Barney didn't respond to that for at least another two minutes. When he did, his response wasn't the key response Robin had hoped for.

"Whoa, whoa whoa, slow your roll there, Scherbatsky, okay? Like I'm gonna tell you what caused all this. We only just discovered each other's identities, and you're wanting to know the 'whys' already? That stuff takes a _long _time to get to, so-"

"Tell me and I'll let you out for at least five minutes."

"Okay, we've got a deal!"

Robin sat down on the floor next to the cell, prepared that this was going to be a long story. Barney started explaining.

"When I was younger, a few years before I moved to Manhattan, I was really fascinated with this thing called the Evil League of Evil."

"Obviously."

He continued. "Anyway, I kept trying to get in. I kept this video blog- which, btw, is where I got the idea for my regular blog, since the video blog thing was just…a lot of work, but uh, I would sorta communicate with the league this way, and later on, I found out that the only way I'd ever get accepted into the league would be if I..killed someone."

"So you killed someone?"

Barney was becoming exasperated with Robin. "No, I didn't kill someone! Well not..exactly..geez, stop assuming things, shut up!" He took a deep breath. "Now where was I?"

"At the part where you killed someone."

He shot her a dirty look, then continued, "Obviously, I didn't want to have to kill an innocent victim. So, I promptly built a death ray and decided I'd target this idiot named Captain Hammer instead." He smiled.

"Okay, hold on a minute, who's Captain Hammer?"

Barney hadn't even realized until just now that he hadn't previously mentioned Captain Hammer. "Captain Hammer was..hmm, how can I even word this? He was a meatheaded toolbag. Called himself a 'superhero' and acted like my rival all the time, and, get this, he TOOK my girlfriend from me!"

"What girlfriend?"

"Penny. Beautiful, sweet Penny. The one chick I remembered from the time when I actually dated, before 'I'll buy you a drink and you take it from here, baby' was a thing."

(In a few minutes, Robin would discover, for the second time, how Barney came to be the way he was.)

"Anyway, so, back to the actual story- I build the death ray and hide under a tarp at some dumb kiss-up convention or whatever that Captain Hammer's trying to put on for the community, and at the end of his lecture (While I personally sat there under that tarp, feeling like I was going to puke from the sickeningness of it all), I pull out the death ray and freeze him in place, but then.." Barney's voice faded and he sighed, exchanging the hyper, action-filled, quick-moving storytelling for a lower, quieter tone, one that sounded of true emotional pain.

"Something really bad happened. The ray misfired. It blew up. And Captain Hammer wasn't the one who died because of it. It was Penny."

Never in his life had Barney explained something so painful to talk about before, and never in life did he want to again. But as he looked at Robin, in that one minute, he could tell that she didn't need him to say another word. From there, she understood everything.

"That's my story," he concluded. "Suppose you've got a better one?"

She shook her head. "I don't. Believe me, my story would sound like nothing compared to that."

Both of them were absolutely silent in the few minutes that followed, and Robin wondered to herself why Barney had kept a secret this big from them for so many years when clearly this was something very serious, and something that needed to be talked through.

She made her way to the control panels and dialed in a combination of numbers, which in turn opened the cell.

"I told you I'd let you out," she said to Barney, smiling slightly.

He exited slowly, and the first thing he did, to Robin's surprise, was give her a hug. His eyes were closed and he rested his head on her shoulders, almost like a little kid who just wanted to be loved.

And Robin, feeling beyond sympathetic for Barney at this point, hugged him back, knowing that he was taking in comfort from the warmth of her body against his. Now that he was out of that cell, he wouldn't be back in it again. There was no need for him to be.

…..

Months passed, and gradually, things returned to normal. Barney, being an expert liar, formulated an extravagant, very exaggeratory story over why he had been gone for so long and told it to the rest of the gang, even throwing in a confident "true story" at the end. Of course, Robin was the only one who knew the truth. It would be at least another year until anyone else found out his secret, and this secret was one that would come to somehow influence the name of Ted's first child as well.

Another two and a half years or so, however, would go by before Barney discovered Robin's secret himself, though he tried getting out parts of information from her regarding her past overtime, and succeeded somewhat as she told him the basics.

That same year proved to be one of the most challenging ones in everyone's lives- the first month, about a week after Barney returned in fact, began with the death of Marshall's father. Barney's own father would later reenter his life, and Robin would come to find out that she couldn't have children, though she didn't tell Barney this for another year at least.

In between those times, they both found new relationships- Barney with Nora, Robin with Kevin- but they still remained in contact with each other, keeping closer than ever. It was around this time that Barney realized that he was, once again, deeply in love with Robin, although he thought he'd finally given up those feelings a long time ago.

After a long and complicated series of events, Barney had cheated on Nora and Robin had cheated on Kevin, and to Barney, there had to be a reason for this. The universe was pulling he and Robin together, clearly, so he broke up with Nora afterwards, planning a new start with Robin. Barney simply couldn't deny it anymore- Robin had brought out the side of him that he didn't know existed still, and that was something remarkable.

He felt, with her, the way he had with Penny- like Billy rather than Barney. Shy, caring, boyish, and dare he think it, romantic. He remembered Penny's words of wisdom, some of the last words he'd ever heard from her- _keep your head up, Billy Buddy- _and although he would always blink back tears when he thought of that, he would feel reassured as well.

The night of the breakup with Nora, Barney- Billy, accurately- planned the whole night out for Robin, thinking that it was going to be special and that she had changed her mind, once and for all. _She's going to break up with Kevin, and she and I'll, y'know, get back together, and we'll start dating again, and everything will be so much better! It's all going to be fine. It'll happen, even if it takes awhile._

Barney had watched Robin enter the bar, where he was waiting. He smiled, assured that she had done the right thing. But then, Kevin walked in behind her, and felt his heart drop in his chest. Robin hadn't broken up with Kevin, for whatever reason.

Barney looked at her from across the room, only needing an answer of some sort, hoping Robin would change her mind somehow. She shook her head slowly,and in that minute, it felt, to Barney, as if time has literally stopped.

Robin was slipping away, just as Penny had, and there was nothing he could do about it. Another loss, and he felt broken once again.

_There's no happy ending, so they say, not for me anyway._

…

Yet another year went by, a year full of more lousy, unfulfilling relationships. It was a cool, early fall night in 2012, and Barney had been sitting alone, waiting for Ted, Marshall, and Lily to walk in. As he watched the doorway expectantly, to his surprise, it was Robin who first entered.

"Hey!" he called cheerfully, a smile on his face as she approached the booth.

"Hey, how's the Barnman been lately?" She sat down next to him, happy to see him too.

"Awesome as usual," he answered in the cocky way that Robin had long come to know and love. The smile on his face grew wider. "Caught myself a ten last night," he said, with obvious pride in his voice.

Robin smacked his arm playfully.

"What?" he reacted defensively. "If there's a reason for me to brag, Robin, I'm gonna take advantage of it, and this is, in fact, a reason to brag."

"Yeah, but 'caught?"'

Barney shrugged. "Why not?" He was quiet, taking in Robin's company. "You look good today."

"Shut up."

"No, I'm serious, you really do. I'll say it- you're a slammin' ten yourself. I don't lie about that." He winked. "Hey, uh..remember that thing, that happened little over a year ago?"

To his surprise, she knew what he was talking about. "What thing?" she pretended, however, like she didn't, but he could tell from her expressions that she knew otherwise.

"Y'know, the thing! The 'I'm…" He said in a hushed voice. "..Secretly Dr Horrible thing. That."

"Oh yeah, right. That ol' elephant in the room."

He licked his lips nervously as he often did. "That didn't..by any chance, like, affect us in any way, did it?"

After he had asked that question, Robin could read what was on his mind- fear of abandonment, fear that he was going to lose her like he had lost Penny. It was in his eyes- that genuine, hurting look of concern that she had seen all too often before. He worried that, somehow, this had affected things between them. And that was his worst nightmare.

"Oh, no, of course not!" she said, adding in a scoffing snort. "No, it's fine, that was a year ago. You shouldn't be worrying about that, honestly, I mean, if anything's been weird between us, it hasn't been because of that, it's just been..because of who knows what."

He breathed out a sigh of relief. "Good. Thank GOD for that. Things _have _been weird and for awhile, I thought maybe that had something to do with it all, but I'm glad it hasn't."

Robin shook her head. "Nope. Sometimes secrets just make people more interesting, you know? We've all got them, and I think they just make us all more…human."

"So we're back to normal."

She nodded. "So we are."

A few minutes later, Barney broke the silence by asking, "Do you…by any chance, wanna go get some frozen yogurt?"

She didn't answer at first- it wasn't usually the norm for Barney to invite her out for frozen yogurt, let alone the norm for him to even eat frozen yogurt at all- but when she did, her response was short and sweet.

"Yeah, sure!"

They left the bar together that day, hand in hand, and Barney enjoyed every second of it, for it predictably didn't last long- not too long after, Robin found a new boyfriend, another corporate tool named Nick.

But time turned them all down different paths in their lives, and though they faced many challenges, eventually, Barney would summon the courage to propose to Robin. The weekend of their wedding was far from easy- Marshall and Lily had fought greatly, and Barney had, due to the stress and pressure of everything, drunk himself into a wasted stupor. But as he observed Robin, who seemed calmer than he was, and ever so classy and collected, looking gorgeous in her wedding dress that day, he felt reassured that he'd done the right thing.

Barney hadn't ever believed that he would love anyone as much as he loved Penny, and even he and Robin's love itself wasn't a mirror replica of what he had had with Penny. They still argued sometimes, and their relationship was far from perfect, not to mention somewhat unconventional- oftentimes, their romantic gestures included lies, schemes, plays, and manipulations- but they were all for the best, and that was why the relationship worked.

Internally, Barney was still broken. But he took great comfort in knowing that Robin was always there with him, just as broken as he was.

In time, the scars would heal for both of them and the pain would cease. And, surprisingly, Barney would learn to feel what was true love once more.


End file.
